City of San Francisco (train)

Southern Pacific SDP45 leads City of San Francisco west at SN overpass 38.29°N 121.9597°W / 38.29; -121.9597, Cannon CA, in April 1971— just before Amtrak

As with the City of Los Angeles, many of the train's cars bore the names of locales around its namesake city, including Mission Dolores, the nickname given to San Francisco's Mission San Francisco de Asís.

Competing streamlined passenger trains were, starting in 1949, the California Zephyr on the Western Pacific (WP), Denver and Rio Grande Western (D&RGW), and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroads, and starting in 1954, the San Francisco Chief on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF).

In October 1955 the Milwaukee Road replaced the Chicago and North Western between Chicago and Omaha; in 1960 the City of San Francisco was combined with the City of Los Angeles east of Ogden.

The City of San Francisco derailed in Nevada in 1939. The incident was ruled an act of sabotage, but, despite years of investigation, remains unsolved.

A blizzard in the Sierra Nevada trapped the train for six days in January 1952, on Track #1 at Yuba Pass (39.3262°N 120.593°W / 39.3262; -120.593), 17 miles (27 km) west of Donner Pass. Snow drifts from 100 mph (160 km/h) winds blocked the train, burying it in 12 feet of snow and stranding it from January 13 to 19. The event made international headlines.

During the effort to reach the train, the railroad's snow-clearing equipment and snow-blowing rotary plows became frozen to the tracks near Emigrant Gap. Hundreds of workers and volunteers, including escaped German POW Georg Gärtner, rescued stranded passengers by clearing nearby Route 40 to reach the train.

The 196 passengers and 30 crewmembers were evacuated within 72 hours of rescuers reaching the train. Upon evacuation, they traveled on foot to vehicles that carried them the few highway miles to Nyack Lodge. The train itself was extricated three days later on January 19.[1]

The M-10004 trainset at Reno, Nevada on a trial run

City of San Francisco baggage label 1936

First run of the new (l) and last of the original (r) City train sets, January 2, 1938. Note the lower and tapered profile of the older cars.

The new 17-car City consist crossing over the Great Salt Lake (Lucin Cutoff) c1939

SP mailer, Oct. 1, 1946

SP mailer, Sept. 1, 1947

External video
Newsreel: Snowstorm strands dozens on Donner Pass - 1952

• June 14, 1936: The City of San Francisco (TR 101-102) made its inaugural run between Chicago and Oakland/San Francisco as streamline through service. It operated with a dedicated Pullman-built 11-car articulated lightweight streamline consist made up of a set of two 1,200 h.p. diesel-electric power unit cars (M-10004A/B), a baggage-mail car, a baggage-dormitory-kitchen car, a diner-lounge car, four named sleeper cars, a 48-seat chair car, and a 38-seat coach-buffet-blind end observation car.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
• January 2, 1938: The City's original train set was replaced with an all new quarter-mile (1,292-foot) long, semi-articulated 17-car lightweight streamline consist made up of one EMC-E2A and two EMC-E2B 1,800 h.p. diesel-electric power unit cars (SF 1-2-3) built by the Electro-Motive Corporation (now EMD), and 14 aluminum-alloy girder-type Pullman-built cars consisting of an auxiliary power-baggage-dormitory car, a 54-seat chair car, a 32-seat coffee shop-kitchen car, a 72-seat diner, a dormitory-buffet-lounge car, eight named sleeper cars, and an 84-foot 6-inch buffet-lounge-observation car (NOB HILL) said to be the "longest passenger car built in the United States" to that time.[8][9][10]

While costing over $2,000,000 to build, operating costs (fuel, crew, etc) for the train were less than two cents per passenger-mile.[11] The extra fare on the City over the full run was $15 for open section Pullman accommodations, $5 in the chair car, and $22.50 for a roomette.[12] After both the original and new train sets made a joint run from Oakland to Chicago on that date, the older 11-car consist was shopped for a seven-month rebuild and then used variously over the next decade as the City of Los Angeles, City of Denver, and City of Portland before being withdrawn from service in the spring of 1948 and eventually scrapped.[13][14]

The new and subsequent City of San Francisco train sets were jointly owned by the C&NW, UP and SP with the exception of the sleepers which were Pullman-owned until 1945 when two of those cars were acquired by the C&NW and a dozen by the UP.[15][16][17] The new train was capable of speeds up to 110 miles an hour and accommodated 222 passengers.[18] Sleeping car space was double that of conventional trains with 168 berths compared to 84 while chair car space was increased to 54.[19] The new City consist had 60 compartments, drawing rooms, bedrooms, and "roomettes" instead of the regular nine for a larger variety of sleeping accommodations to choose from than on any train in America.[20] Among the premium services provided on the train were stewardess-nurses, a barber shop, a shower bath, and an internal telephone system. All regularly assigned cars were also air-conditioned.[21] Frequency remained at five trips per month each way.

• August 12, 1939: 1939 City of San Francisco Derailment occurred near Palasade. Two dozen passengers and crew members were killed with many more injured.[22]
• July 26, 1941: A second set of equipment entered service allowing departures ten times per month each way. The added service replaced the short-lived steam powered Pullman-built mostly heavyweight (steel) streamline Forty-Niner that had operated an almost ten-hour slower 49-hour run five times a month between Chicago and San Francisco from July 8, 1937 to July 27, 1941.[23][24] Under an order of the War Production Board, no new head-end or passenger cars of any type (other than "military sleepers") were built and delivered to US railroads from mid 1942 until late 1945.[25]
• 1942-46: The lounge-observation car Nob Hill and lounge-buffet car Marina were removed from the consists of the City of San Francisco's two train sets and placed in storage during WWII in compliance with a General Order of the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) banning the carriage of strictly luxury cars without passenger revenue capacity. Those cars were replaced with sleepers.[26][27][28]
• October 1, 1946: Service was increased to thrice weekly departures from both Chicago and San Francisco made every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening.[29]
• September 1, 1947: The City became daily with the creation of additional train sets to support seven-day-a-week operation in both directions of its 39-and-a-half-hour service. This change relegated the long-standing (since 1887) Overland to a secondary, no longer "limited" train in providing daily service between Chicago and Oakland/San Francisco on the Overland Route.[N 1][30][31] A fifth consist made possible by the deliveries of new post war cars was added to the City of San Francisco in 1950.[32]
• January 13, 1952: The westbound City of San Francisco was caught in a blizzard in the Sierras at Yuba Pass where the train set remained stranded until January 19. The incident was one inspiration for the Railway series book The Twin Engines.
• October 30, 1955: The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (The Milwaukee Road) replaced the Chicago and North Western between Chicago and Omaha.[33]
• July 16, 1962: The SP's San Francisco Overland (TR 27-28) ended its long run as a separate San Francisco/Oakland to Ogden year-round daily train when that service was consolidated with the City of San Francisco except for occasional summer and holiday seasonal extra section runs of the Overland which service ended on January 2, 1964.[34][35]
• May 1, 1971: Operation of the City of San Francisco was discontinued by the MILW-UP-SP when Amtrak took over all long-distance inter city passenger operations in the United States, although Amtrak retained the name for the thrice-weekly Denver-San Francisco/Oakland portion of the run until June, 1972, when the entire Chicago-San Francisco/Oakland route became daily again as the San Francisco Zephyr.[36] Amtrak replaced its service between Chicago and San Francisco/Oakland on July 16, 1983 with its current daily train, the California Zephyr, when a portion of the route was moved from Union Pacific tracks in Wyoming to those of the Denver Rio Grande Western in Colorado.[37]

Consist listings (1936-1968)

Consists of the original five-times-monthly City of San Francisco (June, 1936)

Consists of the five-times-monthly City of San Francisco (February, 1941)

Consists of the daily City of San Francisco (April, 1948)

City of San Francisco and San Francisco Overland consolidated consist effective July 16, 1962

Consists of the daily City of San Francisco (January, 1968)

The City of San Francisco name has been applied to a 10/6 sleeping car built by Pullman Standard in the early 1950s. The car is now owned by the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad and operates on the line's dinner and first class trains. Union Pacific itself has a dome lounge car used on excursion and executive trains which carries the City of San Francisco name.

• Passenger train service on the Chicago and North Western Railway
• Passenger train service on the Milwaukee Road
• Passenger train service on the Southern Pacific Railroad
• Passenger train service on the Union Pacific Railroad

• DeNevi, Don. (1979). Tragic Train: The City of San Francisco -- The Development and Historic Wreck of a Streamliner., Superior Publishing. ISBN 0875645259.
• Dubin, Arthur D. (1964) Some Classic Trains. Milwaukee: Kalmbach Books.
• Haine, Col. Edgar A. (1994). Train Wrecks. Cranbury, NJ: Cornwall Books
• Heath, Erle (1945). Seventy-Five Years of Progress: Historical Sketch of the Southern Pacific. San Francisco: Southern Pacific Railroad.
• Schafer, Mike; Welsh, Joe (1997). Classic American Streamliners. Osceola, Wisconsin: MotorBooks International. ISBN 978-0-7603-0377-1.
• Solomon, Brian (2000). Union Pacific Railroad. Osceola, Wisconsin: MBI. ISBN 0-7603-0756-3.
• Strack, Don (1999). Diesels of the Union Pacific, 1934-1982, The Classic Era, Volume 1 Halifax, Pa.: Withers Publishing Co.
• Wayner, Robert J. (1972). Car Names, Numbers and Consists. New York: Wayner Publications

Wikimedia Commons has media related to City of San Francisco.

• "The Case of the Stranded Streamliner" by Central Pacific Railroad Museum
• 1969 Timetable, courtesy of streamlinerschedules.com